A valley woman is patting herself on the back after finding her car nearly 3 hours after it was stolen.
Police are actively searching for the thief they say stole a Jeep Wrangler at about 9 p.m. last Wednesday near Lake Mead and Nellis Boulevards.
Marlene Arellano was visiting her mother-in-law, Wednesday, when it all when down.
"We were freaked out," she says.
She was dropping off a car seat.
"I left the car running because it was freezing outside and we weren't really even going to go inside the house," said Arellano.
But she did end up going in the house.
"We heard the door shut and the tire screeching so we ran out to the driveway," she said.
Then the driver took off!
"My husband started running after the car."
The chase was unsuccessful. Police came out and took a report, but Arellano wanted to investigate on her own. So later that night, she went back to her mother-in-law's neighborhood.
"I went back to her house and I looked for tire marks," said Arellano.
Using a spare key, she pressed the panic button repeatedly. She followed the sound of her car's alarm until she found it! The car was missing tons of valuables and documents with her home address.
The suspect kept the car key which also had Arellano’s house key on the same ring. That’s where the plot thickens.
On Monday, Arellano’s home surveillance system caught a man stealing a package from her porch then sifting through keys in an attempt to unlock her front door.
She's convinced that the guy in the video is the man that stole the car. She believes he came back to her home to break in and steal more, but by that time she had already changed her locks.
"The package, the car, it's just materialistic stuff, but the fact that he could come back,” said Arellano. “He knows where I live."
